Sport Citadel

Wait, silence, ovation: shows change but the passion of the crowds crammed on the bleachers of the arenas of all times seems to be unchanged over millennia.

Stadiums, indoor and outdoor sport arenas are much more related to their Greek and Latin precursors than any other architecture ever built by human hands. This is because sport is a metaphor for life, and life has always been a sequence of challenges and battles, victories and defeats.

Competitiveness is one of the key characteristics of human biology: life itself is a competition to survival. For this reason, any architect’s gesture designing a sport arena is an ancient gesture. It is a gesture, which is balanced between function and theatricality. The greatest architects have made this gesture. All over the world, it continues to inspire and generate some of the most magnificent architectures of our time. Sport Citadel requires architects to make such gesture. At the foot of the Alps nearby Turin, in one of the most significant districts in the history of European sport, a vast area is about to host an ambitious dream: the creation of an arena and its sport citadel.

Sport citadel aims to generate a true acropolis of competitiveness.

It will be a global reference to practice, study and celebrate multiple disciplines. Prior to a training space, it will be a space to live. It will be a space where to materialize the dream of harmony, overcoming limits and pursuit of excellency, in which the sport practice is grounded.

It will be a unique and fascinating challenge. In fact, designing an area [for sport] means creating a sanctuary for the display of the sporting spectacle. Moreover, it means giving a reference to the community. It means creating a place where to hope and rejoice, be moved and touched. Here, thousands of hearts can be turned on in unison by one of the passions that has always been inflaming men and women of all times: sport.

Yac thanks all the architects who will take part in this challenge.